Perhaps the influence of the four great winds on character is only a fancied one; but it is evident on temperament, which is not altogether a matter of temperature, although the good old deacon used to say, in his humble, simple way, that his third wife was a very good woman, but her “temperature was very different from that of the other two.”  The north wind is full of courage, and puts the stamina of endurance into a man, and it probably would into a woman too if there were a series of resolutions passed to that effect.  The west wind is hopeful; it has promise and adventure in it, and is, except to Atlantic voyagers America-bound, the best wind that ever blew.  The east wind is peevishness; it is mental rheumatism and grumbling, and curls one up in the chimney-corner like a cat.  And if the chimney ever smokes, it smokes when the wind sits in that quarter.  The south wind is full of longing and unrest, of effeminate suggestions of luxurious ease, and perhaps we might say of modern poetry,—­at any rate, modern poetry needs a change of air.  I am not sure but the south is the most powerful of the winds, because of its sweet persuasiveness.  Nothing so stirs the blood in spring, when it comes up out of the tropical latitude; it makes men “longen to gon on pilgrimages.”

I did intend to insert here a little poem (as it is quite proper to do in an essay) on the south wind, composed by the Young Lady Staying With Us, beginning,—­

   “Out of a drifting southern cloud
   My soul heard the night-bird cry,”

but it never got any farther than this.  The Young Lady said it was exceedingly difficult to write the next two lines, because not only rhyme but meaning had to be procured.  And this is true; anybody can write first lines, and that is probably the reason we have so many poems which seem to have been begun in just this way, that is, with a south-wind-longing without any thought in it, and it is very fortunate when there is not wind enough to finish them.  This emotional poem, if I may so call it, was begun after Herbert went away.  I liked it, and thought it was what is called “suggestive;” although I did not understand it, especially what the night-bird was; and I am afraid I hurt the Young Lady’s feelings by asking her if she meant Herbert by the “night-bird,”—­a very absurd suggestion about two unsentimental people.  She said, “Nonsense;” but she afterwards told the Mistress that there were emotions that one could never put into words without the danger of being ridiculous; a profound truth.  And yet I should not like to say that there is not a tender lonesomeness in love that can get comfort out of a night-bird in a cloud, if there be such a thing.  Analysis is the death of sentiment.

But to return to the winds.  Certain people impress us as the winds do.  Mandeville never comes in that I do not feel a north-wind vigor and healthfulness in his cordial, sincere, hearty manner, and in his wholesome way of looking at things.  The Parson, you would say, was the east wind, and only his intimates know that his peevishness is only a querulous humor.  In the fair west wind I know the Mistress herself, full of hope, and always the first one to discover a bit of blue in a cloudy sky.  It would not be just to apply what I have said of the south wind to any of our visitors, but it did blow a little while Herbert was here.